All Charged Up And Not Sure Where To Go

Electric vehicles are the new black in the auto world. Anand Mahindra, known to be a risk-taker, is leading the electric vehicles play in India. But as the market grows and competition drives in, can Mahindra consolidate and maintain pole position?

 

- T. Surendar

THE BUILDING IS eminently missable; offa dusty two-lane road in Bengaluru’s Whitefield area, it definitely doesn’t look like a space that houses a company in one of the hottest sectors in the world. One of the floors is a playschool; another has sundry small businesses jostling for space. The other floor houses the corporate office of Lithium Urban Technologies.

The office itself suits the building; walls unpainted, spar-tan furniture, unpredictable lighting… It could be any boring business anywhere in the country. What it is, however, is the flagbearer of electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India today. Lithium runs a fleet of electric vehicles, hiring them out to companies such as Mercedes-Benz, SAP Labs, and Wipro, which use EVs to ferry their employees to work. Lithium buys these vehicles and then leases them out, a model that the government has since adopted; public sector Energy Ef-ficiency Services Ltd (EESL) is now doing the same thing to promote the adoption of EVs by government offices.